If you work in the chocolate industry, then you’re probably already aware that the Academy of Chocolate Awards 2011 is coming up very soon.
This year, I’ve been asked to be on the organising committee for the awards, which is not only a great honour, but will hopefully help us to reach a wider audience than ever before. To that end, I’d like to put out a request to all the fabulous chocolate makers and chocolatiers that read Chocablog to enter your chocolates into the awards!
There are ten categories:
- Golden Bean – Best Dark Bean To Bar
- Best Flavoured Dark Chocolate Bar
- Best Milk Chocolate Bar – Bean To Bar
- Best Flavoured Milk Chocolate Bar
- Best Filled Chocolate – Flavoured Or Plain
- Best Dark Truffle (Unflavoured)
- Best Milk Truffle (Unflavoured)
- Best Drinking Chocolate
- Best Packaging – Bars
- Best Packaging – Filled Chocolate
The awards are open to producers anywhere in the world, so if you make something that fits into one of those categories, please do consider entering. I’d love to see as wide a range as possible, and hopefully a few surprises!
You can get find more details of the awards and what’s required here, and you can download a PDF entry form here. If you’ve got any other questions about The Academy or the awards, contact Kate Johns at kate@chocolate-week.co.uk.
Although I have said that Vice Chocolates had quite an eye-catching booth at the San Francisco Chocolate Salon, I find myself slightly disappointed to be at home with only a plain dark chocolate and sea salt bar rather than a set of shiny truffles. You see, Vice has a half-mad look, right from the “V” that is shaped like a snake with an apple at its tail and in a form almost also like a heart. The black and purple color scheme dares to challenges traditional elegance. Their truffles have bright gold to color them and names like Cherry Bomb and Vixen.
And so I come to the one small bar, a 65% using Venezuelan cacao, like all Vice Chocolates do. Most of the bars are also 65%, though there are also three in 88% and two in white.
The Fleur de Sel has one face with its salty side, the other well-molded to be dark and shiny. The salt crystals are the right size and percentage with the chocolate. The sweet dark chocolate is pleasant, having a calm, reddish flavor. The salt is around early on, before you are left with the smooth, fine-grained chocolate. It isn’t quite enough to make me go off on a mental adventure, but is still all well.
If the truffles really are as crazy as they seem, then perhaps, yes, the Fleur de Sel is one of the less exciting offerings. Yet that is not to say it isn’t well done.
My last encounter with Cocoa Loco was back in 2009 and took the form of a rather hot chilli chocolate bar. This time round, I have something a little more sedate; this rather cute little box of six handmade, organic champagne truffles.
You might only get six in a box, but these are substantial chocolates at about an inch across. They’re decorated in fine flakes of milk chocolate, which conceals a thicker than average 34% milk chocolate shell underneath.
Inside the shell is a soft and creamy ganache with a lovely smooth texture. The ganache is only subtly flavoured with Champagne, so don’t expect a strong alcoholic kick here. As with all good Champagne truffles, it’s more of a gentle hint than anything else, with the cocoa flavours taking centre stage.
Combine that with the thick and creamy milk chocolate shells and you end up with a really quite delicious truffle. The need for a longer shelf life means they do lack a little of the light, freshness of my all time favourite truffles from Cocoa Mountain, but that’s a minor niggle. I’d be very happy to receive a little box of these on Valentine’s Day.
One word of advice if you are buying them for someone though – make sure you’re around when they open the box, because they’ll disappear very, very quickly.
Even though we’ve been reviewing for a little over four years, there are still many chocolate makers whose products we have yet to taste, and I was mildly surprised to find that we’ve reviewed relatively few Pralus products. Francois Pralus is the son of a famous patissier who followed in his father’s footsteps and has been making his own chocolate for over twenty years.
The wrapping is somewhat unusual – brown paper held together with raffia, giving it a rustic, almost home made look. This imposing looking ‘bar’ is more like an ingot – a thick, chunky looking confection of milk chocolate, praline and hazelnuts. It was something of a surprise to read that it only weighs 160g, because it seems a lot heavier. It’s impressive before tasting – beautifully presented with the Pralus logo moulded into the top.
Such was the size of this bar, I decided to share it between four people after dinner. It was sliced into chunks, which was when I noticed the neat row of hazelnuts running through the middle. The shell is a thick layer of 45% milk chocolate, rich creamy with good cocoa flavours. The praline filling is (as you might expect from someone who’s been making chocolate for over two decades) smooth and rich with a good solid almond flavour. It’s incredibly rich though, and even four of us couldn’t finish off this little beast in one sitting!
So why ‘Infernale’? Devilish? This is certainly one of the richest, tastiest pralines I’ve tasted in quite a while – up there with the best. The milk chocolate coating is about as cocoa rich as it’s possible to get, making this a real indulgence. Buy one of these and it should keep you happy for the best part of a week.
